ASHER #2
Fear was beginning to fill me. I found Jordan’s hand and squeezed it. My heart was speeding up, pounding against my ribcage. The wind was lashing the house and the rain came down in buckets. It wasn’t that I distrusted George’s construction skills, but this wasn’t the sort of storm you expected.
I grabbed my phone and unplugged the charger, then looked around the room, trying to think if there was anything else I needed to unplug.
Before I could get up, Jordan’s eyes were open, and a frown was creasing his brow.
But I didn’t have time to say anything. We both knew he had to sneak back to his room before the thunder woke up our parents.
I inhaled a breath of air, as if to say something, when my heart nearly burst out of my chest. For a moment, I had no idea what had happened, except that my ears rang, and all my instincts told me to run for my life.
A lightning bolt had struck something so close that a flash of white light with an almost purple edge poured into the room.
At the same instant, the terrible crashing sound ripped through my skull.
I yelped in fright, and Jordan sat up, wrapping his arms around me as if he could protect me from a storm. At that moment, I believed that he could.
“George! Boys!” Mom. She called us loudly while thumping up the stairs. A door at the end of the hallway slammed shut.
I jumped out of bed and succeeded in pulling my underwear up my legs before my hands began trembling violently.
“Boys?” George echoed loudly. “Get up. Jordan!” Another door slammed open as I jumped out of my bed and crossed the room. “Jordan?” George was calling while panic entered his voice as if a lightning strike had pulverized his son.
My gaze darted to the window while fear crashed on me from all sides. I could see a blaze out there despite the rain. The flames were winking out under the downpour and my heart stopped for a second. The lightning bolt had struck the old oak in the backyard, splitting it in half.
It was pure luck it hadn’t struck the house itself. But it still could.
As if time itself was slowing down, I still managed to look at the horrified expression on Jordan’s face. It only lasted an instant before the door of my room flew open.
Had I not locked it last night? No. In the night, I had gone to the bathroom. Stupid, stupid boy. How could I have…? But what good would it have done us? Jordan was here and my mother was opening the door after they had found Jordan’s room empty.
“Asher,” Mom hissed in fear, finding me standing in the middle of the room, in my underwear, hair a mess of locks that went in every direction and eyes wide with fear. It took her a moment — a moment that seemed to last forever as my mind raced and raced — before her gaze moved from me to my bed.
I followed it, my mouth opening in horror, and found Jordan holding the plain white sheet close to his chest, a frown contorting his eyebrows, one bare leg hanging off the edge of the bed, his underwear plainly on the floor three feet away.
“Are they there? Eileen?” George stormed in after my mom, his composed gaze scanning the room methodically for damage or fire before he nodded. “I see. I, uh… Eileen?” He turned to my mom as if to invite her out of the room.
It’s not what it looks like, I thought I shouted.
My mouth worked, but the silence was all I managed to produce.
What good would it have been if I spat out that blatant lie?
It was exactly what it looked like. My stepbrother was naked in my bed, and the sheer horror on both our faces was enough to incriminate us, to condemn us.
“What is going on here?” Mom said, her voice dropping so low I could barely hear it over the pelting rain. Thunder rolled over the sky, nearly shaking the roof off the house.
“Not now, Eileen,” George said in pure frustration. “Go downstairs, boys. Both of you.”
Jordan produced a sound as if to protest leaving the bed and the last of his decency in it.
“How could you?” Mom spat. Me? But she wasn’t looking at me. Her furious gaze turned to Jordan. “Don’t you have any shame at all?”
“Eileen, for God’s sake, let them go downstairs,” George snapped angrily.
Mom spun to look at him, the hurt and disgust so visible on her face. “I will do whatever the hell I like!” Her hands closed into fists. Even wearing her white and pink pajamas, she was intimidating, seemingly ready to claw everyone’s eyes out if we asked for it.
My heart was pounding so hard I could barely keep track of anything else that was happening.
“As well as you have,” Mom said. “And as well as your son has.” Her glare returned to Jordan, ignoring my presence altogether. “You promised me. You promised to look after him. How could you? He’s just a boy, Jordan. Your stepbrother!”
Anger rose in me at hearing this. I opened my mouth again to fight her, but a flash of light shut me up, followed by thunder so loud that even if we had been speaking, it was inaudible.
“Enough!” George took control of the situation, pushing himself between Mom and us. “The power is out. The storm’s getting worse. All of you, downstairs, now. Now!”
Mom pushed herself up against George, furiously staring up into his eyes much like I had done to Jordan so many times. But there was nothing other than resentment in their eyes. There was no love that had kept them together all these years. Things were far worse than we knew, I realized.
Mom marched away and I had to face George’s serious look. He expressed no emotion at all. Was he so hurt and shocked that he couldn’t even move his facial muscles? Mom was disgusted, that much I knew.
“Get dressed. Both of you.” The cold words dropped out of his mouth into the dead silence of the room. “And come downstairs.” He left the room with such a straight back that it looked like he could be supporting the entire house from falling down.
“Fuck,” I whimpered as I shut the door after George.
Jordan jumped off the bed and grabbed his underwear. As he dressed quickly, I did the same, putting on my sweatpants and a T-shirt as quickly as I could, my fingers trembling, panting, and still feeling like I would suffocate.
“What are we going to do?” I whispered, shaking more, not less.
Jordan was dressed, his eyes dead and face expressionless.
He was so much of his father in some ways.
This was one of them. Steel strength and composure.
But he didn’t walk away so coldly from the room and me.
Instead, he came to me and put his arms around me, pulling me in.
“Don’t worry, baby boy,” he said in a deep rumble. “Us against the world. Remember?”
But did it also mean us against our parents? I didn’t want those battle lines. I didn’t want to be in that situation. It was all wrong. They were getting a divorce. That should have freed us to do whatever we liked. Right?
As if some of the strength and courage poured from Jordan into me, my shaking passed, and I simply savored this moment of stillness, being in his arms, feeling his calm. Even the thunder seemed to be moving further away from us now, though the old oak was split and down, and the power was out.
“They’re waiting for us,” Jordan said.
I nodded and we let go of one another. With my head held as high as I could, I walked out and descended the stairs until we found our parents in the living room. They were in the middle of an angry exchange, hissing and murmuring between one another.
George noticed us before Mom did. He fell silent and straightened his back, tucking his hands in his pockets. Mom stood on the other end of the living room, crossing her arms, her chin thrust out. My head moved down immediately as if I carried all the shame of the world painted on my face.
She was the cool one, right? She was the sort of mom who would matter-of-factly make a presentation about safe sex when I came out. Was this truly so bad?
Mom wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t looking at anyone. Her gaze was distant, directed toward the empty space behind George. Her mouth was pinched into a small, angry dot, and her facial muscles were hard.
My stepfather looked at his feet, his face expressionless.
The wind blew hard outside, though the thunder was receding.
Dim, gray light was all that filled the living room, filtered through dark clouds, wet windows, and white drapes.
“Boys,” George said in a tight voice. “I don’t know where to begin…”
Jordan touched the small of my back. His fingertips gave me the courage I needed to keep standing.
It felt like a trial. Somehow, I had managed to trick myself into not expecting them to be so horrified.
Perhaps the hours I had shared with Jordan had been too good to let me believe anyone could object.
And yet, these people were our parents. Years of expectations and attempts to turn us into something we were not couldn’t be turned upside down without heartbreak.
My mother knew where to begin, though. She turned to us with a stone-cold expression on her face.
“I don’t imagine you can understand the depth of hurt you’ve caused,” she said, her deep tone scarier than the thunder.
“How could you understand? You have both shown the level of selfishness I hadn’t believed you were capable of.
” A beat. Her emotions, few as they were, winked out.
“You are family.” The word was louder than all the others, driving in the point like it was a dagger put to my heart.
I shuddered and Jordan pressed the small of my back harder.
“You lived together. You ate together. You played games together as brothers. And all this time…?” As though she would sob, she stopped herself. “When did this start?”
“Eileen, I don’t think…” George began.
She didn’t look at him. “I wasn’t talking to you.” Her glare sparked with anger. “Jordan. When did this start?”
“Mom,” I said, but she cut me off.
“To you, I can’t even talk,” she said, her voice trembling only once. “I can’t look at you, Asher.”